09-10-2010, 06:12 PM
Matthew,
Thank you.
Actually I did run across a re-enactor in leather scale armor and figured that would only be pouring fuel on the fire. :wink:
I also saw a reference to using horse hooves. Can't imagine having enough. Wouldn't the horses object? Surely not that many were going to the knackers in the fifth and sixth century.
The unavailability of mail is especially interesting after the Empire had produced hundreds of thousands of sets for the existing legions and auxiliaries (some of them). But that relates to the part of warfare I know best: logistics. Something that might be relatively easy to produce seems impossible just a few years later because the infrastructure has disappeared. For example, if we wanted to armor 100,000 men in mail today it would be enormously expensive and take a year or more. We know how. We have the materials. Small quantities are being produced as we speak. But we can't just order 100,000 out of a catalog. No infrastructure.
In AD 400 the infrastructure to support a standing army--including cavalry--existed in Britain. By 500 it (apparently) did not. A hundred years is a long time. Little of what we use on a daily basis lasts ten years. (How many of us drive ten year old cars daily?) If new was not being built continually, the ability to build it atrophies.
Thank you.
Actually I did run across a re-enactor in leather scale armor and figured that would only be pouring fuel on the fire. :wink:
I also saw a reference to using horse hooves. Can't imagine having enough. Wouldn't the horses object? Surely not that many were going to the knackers in the fifth and sixth century.
The unavailability of mail is especially interesting after the Empire had produced hundreds of thousands of sets for the existing legions and auxiliaries (some of them). But that relates to the part of warfare I know best: logistics. Something that might be relatively easy to produce seems impossible just a few years later because the infrastructure has disappeared. For example, if we wanted to armor 100,000 men in mail today it would be enormously expensive and take a year or more. We know how. We have the materials. Small quantities are being produced as we speak. But we can't just order 100,000 out of a catalog. No infrastructure.
In AD 400 the infrastructure to support a standing army--including cavalry--existed in Britain. By 500 it (apparently) did not. A hundred years is a long time. Little of what we use on a daily basis lasts ten years. (How many of us drive ten year old cars daily?) If new was not being built continually, the ability to build it atrophies.
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil
Ron Andrea
Ron Andrea
